The life and experiences of a community college philosophy teacher, department chair and former debate coach.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Attitudes all over the place...

A shows up 10 minutes into the morning quiz. A is in my afternoon class and wants to take the quiz with this bunch instead, as it seems that he doesn't want to stay around any longer than necessary... poor dear, I'm sure the Burger King really can't operate without his shining personality. Too bad for A that we discussed material he'll need for homework next time before the quiz -- he missed that. He also missed getting back his paper, and I only bring them to class once. Bummer, dude.

DD (for ding-dong) asks the same question every day. Finally, I had the class answer it for me. I wonder if he got the message?

J is a real jerk kid -- he turned his paper in late, I took off the penalty I said I would according to the syllabus, and he's been giving me the stink-eye ever since.

I got back to my office after my teach-a-thon, which backed up to the marathon-meetings... Waiting for me was an e-mail form someone who has missed, at minimum, all of 3 classes and most of a fourth. This is a night class that had Labor Day off. At most this person has attended 1 class -- and they want to start back up with the class, without some kind of verifiable problem -- or, really any other explanation than "things came up".

My non-trads are starting to freak out a little. One turned in a pretty good paper, but the structure was unclear, so I didn't see her objection to Aristotle. She was pretty stunned by the C, but when she pointed out the objections to me, I told her I'd re-grade the paper and she should expect a higher grade. She's pretty fixated on the grade -- so much so that she came by my office to discuss it some more --- it was kind of like she wouldn't let me give the paper another look ---

Our "student senate" had elections last week. 91 students voted, of almost 11,000 who were eligible to vote. I have at least 150 students. An informal poll showed only a few people realized we had a student senate at all. Four knew there were elections. 5 were available to vote for the TWO hours the "polls" were open, and I actually had one of the 91 students who voted in my class. If their "adviser" notices me laughing when he talks about Student Senate being the voice of the student body, now I'll have some data to back-up my cynicism. He tells me he's "thinking about" having on-line voting. It isn't hard to do -- although, why would they pursue it if they aren't pushed -- hmmm, maybe I'll do the pushing.

I do wonder whether I have an inner aggressive side that got mitigated by coaching debate -- now that I'm not doing that anymore, I seem to be raking muck all over.